[GT]The Crippling Black Hole in the Economic Module

Day 1,813, 01:24 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Ayame Crocodile


Over the last few months we have seen and felt the frailty and failings of the economic module. Seen the value of Gold plummet and watched as all but a few products become unprofitable.

And still I have yet to see anyone raise, what in my mind, is the clear cause of all these problems.

The interconnectivity of values in the new world are thankfully far simpler to visualise than those of everyday reality.We have three types of resource (despite the world map saying different) these are Player Created, Gold and Currency.

It's the relationship between these resources and how they come into being that causes the economic problems we have been experiencing.

Player created resources are both raw materials, which are formed for free daily, and products created from those raw materials. I've grouped these together as both raw materials, food and weaponry to all intents and purposes are created without cost, disregarding the initial gold or currency investment of course.

Gold itself enters into the equation through many different instances, by winning medals, levelling up or by purchasing Gold with real life money. Again much like player created resources this resource comes into existence from nowhere, it is created freely and enters into the economy.

Now we come to the crux of the matter; Currency. Whilst you may think currency is created through working, selling goods and buying it on the monetary Market, you'd be wrong. It is traded.

Whenever your product is bought and you have some new found CC whilst another player has less. This is the same for working and the monetary Market too.

There is no national bank, no international finance body whose job it is to create currency. And whilst there are a few starting missions whereby currency is created in the same way as Gold can be, it is a far too insignificant amount to even consider as having any tangible effect on the new world economy.

We do not just have a finite amount of currency, for all intents and purposes, but quite possibly an ever shrinking amount of it as it exits the economy through things like buying saltpeters.


The Infamous Currency Black Hole

When that's coupled with growing production and ever more gold entering the economy the value of currency will continue to skyrocket, especially in relation to Gold.

There are ways of solving this, should the admin team wish to of course, having the bot start buying from the Market heavily again for one would inject newly formed currency into the economy or ending the global currency whilst reintroducing the ‘Issue Currency’ proposal for congress to inject currency and devalue it, are examples of just a couple of ways of bucking this trend.

We shouldn't of course be waiting for the admins to act on these issues, we ourselves as a nation and as individuals need to be aware of this situation and take it into account with how we deal with the economic module.

I've long been a believer in the idea that the only stable and safe investment is in production. Whilst the value of goods in terms of currency fluctuates their usefulness as a good remains at a constant level.

Stashing gold and currency is a good idea in it's flexibility to react to any given situation, although they're hampered by their volatility in relation to each other.

I'm no economist, thus no doubt a lack of jargon and specific terminology in this article, and so despite being sure, in so far as my knowledge allows me, of this articles truth I'd be very interested to hear differing opinions or possibly confirmation from others that my hypothesis is in fact correct.